"emperor" Tag

The Exhibition “The Future of Fashion is Now” gave me a chance to consider about clothes, itself. Especially, the work called “Clear” by Mary Ping was quite impressive for me. Even though there were so many works that were using transparent materials on their works, Mary Ping’s piece was special for me. Because I think that the others focused on showing decay and disappearing phenomenon, but Mary Ping’s work literally shows clear, and perfectly- transparent clothes and accessories.

The visual image of her piece reminds me of the classic tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” written by Danish author Hans Christian Anderson. As you already know, the story is about an emperor who believes weaver’s lie that if clothes are made of some materials have a special effect, only those who are good at their job or are intelligent would be able see it. But at the end of story, children shouted the truth in front of emperor that he did not wear clothes. On the other hands, it also depicts the fact everyone was pretending like they could see the clothes and they even praised king’s naked body to king’s

wonderful clothes.

From this tale, I found some fundamental features and reasons of clothes. For example, what is beautiful clothes( this question can be extended by, what is beauty), why do we have to wear clothes every single day, and why do we want to wear clothes. What is the function of clothes… and so on.

First of all, back to the original subject “clear”, Mary Ping says “Beauty reduced to the form, executed in transparent -and thus honest- material.” I supposed there are so many kind of beauties in the worlds as much as there are so many people in existance. Also Beauty reflects so many components at the same time. Some of people thoughts beauty is one of the way to show their strong political and financial power to the others through colourful clothes, accessories, expensive decoration art works etc. Specifically the form of clothes were getting bigger, heavier and even really uncomfortable to show their power visually at that time and they thought that was most perfect clothes for them. In the same vein, the emperor in Anderson’s story wanted new clothes to exaggerate his power. Therefore sometimes i felt clothes seemed like a decoration paper to conceal and exaggerate myself. So Mary Ping’s piece makes me imagine that if everyone wear on this transparent clothes, they can be more honest than now. Because it can break the illusion by showing everything – natural body shape- without decoration.

Also It makes me feel like it has really natural, honest and variable form. Because this piece’s actual form is up to customer body. So it’s quite interesting process to observe changing of it’s form by different models. I mean if someone who has really big belly wears it, the shape of clothe looks like D-shaped clothes. Or if someone who is really thin wears that clothes, it looks like wearing space suit, because of empty space inside of the clothes. One more thing is , One of the other features of clothes reflects an identity. you can show your individual identity on your clothes. Clothes is really important way to show your identity and you can distinguish yourself from others by your unique clothes. And which components that i found interesting is we can see your own unique identity when you are wearing “Clear”piece.

We usually tend to regard to show naked body as taboo and because of that reason, we need clothes to protect our body from other people’s attention. Ironically Mary Ping’s piece has totally opposite function compared to traditional clothes. However, I think its function is quite nice. Because as it looks like, it’s almost impossible to hide or exaggerate something in front of so many eyes. Because you always should be conscious of it.